Joshua Merchant

Two Stack Mattress

He comes in the house breath stained
with the same green crumbs resting betwixt
him and my crevices. there’s his mother,
the woman with her own handle of brown,
His siblings, and me. we hold him. keep him
afloat. keep him from sinking into Langston’s
nightmare while washing away images of gun smoke
spooling into smiling faces- the fag he sprayed
with lysol for being too mouthy, or the woman
He anointed with a chicken wing. some days
I cradle him until His fist is the size of his boys.
He says I swear somebody praying for me. I don’t
know how I’m not in jail and they laugh. He says
daddy loves you and they fall. until they hover. until
all that is left is the thunderous wave of snoring
and the cooing of children in pursuit of the same bliss.

Joshua Merchant (THEY/THEM/THEIRS) is a Black Queer native of East Oakland exploring what it means to love as an intersectional being. A lot of what they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of what it means to be a “Delectable Negro” in a world with an insatiable appetite for Blackness and the many ways we show up spiritually, mentally, and physically. They address the countless exaggerations of white fantasy as a means of humanizing the Black Queer experience through a lens only someone who grew up ashy and yet a teardrop slicker than the average lesson any Corner-Store-Prophet could provide. They've had the honor to witness their work being held and understood in literary journals such as 580Split, Soup Can Magazine, Snow Flake Magazine, Corporeal, Obsidian Literature & Arts In The African Diaspora, Verum Literary Press, Ice Floe Press, Hotazel Review, MORIA and elsewhere. They have also received the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award for poetry and was nominated for the 2023 Best of the Net Poetry Award by Spare Parts Lit. Their forthcoming book is scheduled to be released in 2025-2026 by Game Over Books.